This is my take on a story that i was told today about Marcallino-bread and wine the boy who legend says that christ came to him by stepping off the cross.

Had the brothers of the church of St.Francis , set on a high Enbankment
Over looking the barren waterless plain Of Matamoras, spoken to Marcallino
Of woman he would not have understood,
Had they pointed to the statue of the Madonna in a crumbiling almost roofless side chapel next to the alter , he would not have comprehended. For Marcallino
had never seen a woman.
At the age of just 8 months he had been found by a mexican soldier a lancer with his parents dead besides him, Like many others in those troubled times they had been killed by indians. The soldier with several others who had recieved no pay from Mexico city for almost a year , had been searching through the remains of yet another abandoned village in search of Tobacco and food. He was down to his last six cigars and horded them like gold dust. Instead he found a child

The soldier whose name history has not recorded, took the child and found a family to care for him amongst the settlers he and his comrades were escorting from indian territory. One month later however ,when they had camped for the night besides a creek bed, the family sought him out amongst his comrades . when we reach a town,they said , the boy must go to an orphanage we are poor people ,with another mouth to feed life will be impossible.
They were right of course, as the soldier well knew, but as an orphan himself his parents having died of cholera when he was just ten years old, he believed the child would do better begging on the streets of mexico city than confined to an orphanage.

In the darkness , the soldier whom I shall call Alonzo, wandered out from the circle of waggons to consider the problem of the child, and to smoke his now last cigar.
In the cold darkness he was about to strike a match. when to his utter astonishment he heard the ringing of a bell, In of all places the desolate plain of Matamoras. A place so cruel to all living things, that not even the scorpions and the rattle snakes could not survive its scorching heat.

The next day the sun still an incandesent mirror image of the dessert it scorched and was already beginnning to sink below the horizon, when the soldier with child strapped to his back like an indian papoose reached the top of the enbankment
The ascent up the narrow winding track had been so difficult, he has been forced to turn his grumbiling kicking mule loose and to continue on foot, nearing exhaustion he sank to his hands and knees, his hands covered in strips of cloth torn from his shirt , for the very rocks seemed molton, the air he gasped surely from hell scorched his lungs
As he struggled onwards he could not help but reflect on his past life.
And found little to his credits , he cursed himself for ever setting out with the child , surely he and the infant would perish on this way of the cross
only the ringing of the bell kept him going.

Then on a sudden gentle hands were helping him to stand and cold spring water was being poured over his face and into his mouth , it tasted like the finest chilled wines of mexico city. for just an instant he believed he must have died on that terrible track. How else could he explain what he saw before him then. A cool breeze cooled his cheeks , a breeze scented with flowers, yes they were camelias like the ones his mother had planted by there door of his childhood home . A paradise stolen from him by his parents death.
A spring gushed from a cleft and fed itself into a cistern cut into the living rock and overflowing passed into a maze of tile lined channels irrigating fields of maise ,corn and tomatoes of a size of redness he had never seen before. And beyond the fields and most inexplicable of all the church. crumbiling and dalapadated ,but with its bell ringing a welcome,

The brothers had been only to happy to take the child, passing him from one to the other, letting him tug on their grey beards while they inhaled the sweet fragrance of his youth and innocence.
It was the brothers who named him Marcallino, after a much loved brother who had died recently. And in time he became much more than just another member of there small dwindiling community , for the brothers knew they had been abandoned long ago by their bishop in Mexico City....
Marcillino Became its very soul..